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| Just $8 - Not A Billion! Feb. 22, 2008 Politicians and bureaucrats can toss around terms like “One Hundred Billion Dollars” or “One Trillion Dollars” with ease. They spend in these terms! But the average and even the above average person finds it difficult to consider these as real numbers. What is a BILLION of anything? Can our readers conceive of what they could buy if they had $1,000,000,000? Probably not! So the big-spenders throw these number around without concern for upsetting the general public. We suggest everyone start converting those billions of dollars to more reasonable figures. Let us use some simple figures - and we’ll round them off to make calculations easy: There are approximately 334 Million people in these United States - if we divide that number into One Billion Dollars, we find that it amounts to $3 for each man, woman and child. When government spend a Billion Dollars - they are spending $3 for every member of your household - since there are about 2.7 people per household, that really means the government is spending approximately $8 of your money. When the politician decides to throw $100 billion into Iraq to rebuild that country’s infrastructure (roads, hospitals, schools, etc) they are sending Iraq $800 of YOUR money - even if they don’t levy a tax for it. Just running the printing presses and “creating” money is a tax - the inflation caused by circulating more printed dollars literally decreases the value of every dollar you have in your pocket, in the bank or money that is owed to you. They are spending YOUR MONEY! Remember: Every $1 billion in expenditures by government costs you $8. Think about that when some politician says it is necessary! |